Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [57]
“Its too expensive. It’s very difficult for most people. I think it is mostly overseas Chinese who are buying.”
She was wrong, it turns out. Eighty percent of homes in China’s cities are owned by private citizens, and just as in the U.S., some have turned to property flipping. But while in the U.S. that bubble has burst, leaving a grim trail of foreclosures and bankruptcies, in China the real estate bubble has continued merrily along, with some cities, like Shanghai, experiencing a doubling in home values every year. As with the stock market, investors have convinced themselves that nothing bad will be allowed to happen, no crashes, no depreciation, until the Olympic Games have passed, and so meanwhile the party continues.
As I finished my steak, which was a very good steak, nicely marbled, seared just so, and to my evolving taste buds, which had adjusted to Chinese fare, completely flavorless, I wondered if it was at all possible to lose money in China. And then I considered the bill, which was hideous. I looked around the room, listened to the businessmen in murmured conversation, and realized that there was probably just one person in this room who was not coming out ahead from his stay in the Jin Mao Tower. But I consoled myself and figured that if all went well, my wife would never learn just how much I squandered in one evening in Shanghai—unless, of course, I decided to write about it. (So, Honey. It’s like this…)
The yin and yang of my budget had been thrown into disarray, and so to restore cosmic balance to my fiscal world, I moved across the river the next day and into a dilapidated hotel. Drunks in the lobby? Check. Dirty green shag carpet in the room? Check. Seat missing from toilet? Check. Bed that looked like the scene of a gruesome crime scene? Check. View of trash-strewn alley? Check. Harmony was returning to my fiscal world. True, it was the kind of hotel with the cracked walls and the chipped paint that suggested sinister things were afoot, but it was cheap, and even more important for my interests, it was well-located, within walking distance of the Bund, which is where I found myself on one gloriously crisp, radiant sunny morning.
No, I jest. The air was breathtakingly foul and I could only assume that for the people of Shanghai sunshine was now nothing more than a dim memory sometimes recalled in elegiac detail by an elder old enough to recall the Qing Dynasty. But still, the swirling clouds of particulate matter did little to deter my enthusiasm during my stroll on the Bund. This little corner of China across the Huangpu River from Pudong and extending through the leafy tangle of villas and avenues in the French Concession is quite likely the easiest place for a Westerner to feel at home in China. This is, of course, because it was built by Westerners. Before they arrived, Shanghai was a sleepy port city of little importance, but its status changed considerably after China lost the First Opium War in 1842 and the city was opened up to the barbarians, who sought to re-create a splendid European burg of Art Deco and Neo-Classical edifices. The fifty-two buildings that comprise the Bund are reflective of the apogee of that era in the early nineteenth century, when the city was quite likely the very coolest place to be for an expat. It wasn’t suffused merely with British, American, and French seekers of wealth and adventure, but also with those displaced by the galloping hoofs of history, mostly White Russians and European Jews who had discovered how very quickly things can change. This was an era of intrigue and champagne, when fortunes were won and lost, gambling dens thrived, and so, too, prostitution, and an Englishman could stroll along the river and dismissively wave off the locals as nothing more than coolies. Things changed, of course. There was the war. And then, in 1949, red flags flew over Shanghai, too, as Mao Zedong marched into power. Somehow, Mao managed to make glittering Shanghai both bland and terrifying, which is a tricky feat